Office of Financial Aid -- Making Quality Education Affordable

We are committed to providing student financial assistance to eligible students to
help pay the costs associated with attending college. As you navigate through our
site, you will discover the various types of student financial assistance that are
available through our department, the application procedures, eligibility requirements
and the application deadline dates.

UPDATE: IRS DATA RETRIEVAL TOOL UNAVAILABLE

The IRS Data Retrieval Tool (DRT) on fafsa.gov and StudentLoans.gov is currently unavailable. The Department of Education and the IRS are working to
resolve the issue as quickly as possible, but at this time DRT is expected to be down
for several weeks. The outage impacts both the 2016-2017 and 2017-2018 FAFSA.

Students and parents who are in the process of completing a FAFSA should manually
enter their 2015 tax information. Students who have successfully completed a FAFSA
and are selected for verification can still satisfy their requirements by requesting
a copy of their 2015 IRS Tax Return Transcript (or parents IRS Tax Return Transcript,
if applicable) at www.irs.gov under Tools.

IMPORTANT 2017-2018 FAFSA INFORMATION:

Starting with the 2017-2018 academic year, two key changes will affect how and when
students will fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA).

First, the Early FAFSA is a White House initiative designed to streamline the financial
aid application process. Students can complete the 2017-2018 FAFSA beginning October
1, 2016 for the 2017-2018 academic year, rather than January 1, at www.fafsa.ed.gov. The earlier submission date will be a permanent change and will enable students to
complete their FAFSA as early as October 1 every year. Students will be notified via
JagMail when we have received their 2017-2018 FAFSA.

Listed below is a summary of key dates for submitting the FAFSA depending on when
students plan to attend USA:

IF ATTENDING USA FROM

SUBMIT THIS FAFSA

SUBMIT THE FAFSA FROM

USING INCOME & TAX INFORMATION FROM

July 1, 2016 - June 30, 2017

2016-2017

January 1, 2016 - June 30, 2017

2015

July 1, 2017 - June 30, 2018

2017-2018

October 1, 2016 - June 30, 2018

2015

July 1, 2018 - June 30, 2019

2018-2019

October 1, 2017 - June 30, 2019

2016

Second, students will report income information from an earlier tax year. For example,
on the 2017-18 FAFSA, students (and their parents, if applicable) will report 2015
income information, rather than 2016 income information.

Students are encouraged to use the IRS Data Retrieval Tool (DRT) to import their (and
their parent(s), if applicable) 2015 tax information directly from the IRS into the FAFSA.
Utilizing DRT helps to prevent errors which may slow processing time.